Energy converters that are fed by local or environmental energy are usually explained by taking recourse to the notion that they convert zero point electromagnetic radiation (ZPE) to electric energy. The ZPE theories have gained a life of their own, as T. Kuhn has pointed out (in his “Black Body Theory and the Quantum”), after emerging from Planck's second theory, specifically from the term ½ hυ in the new formula for oscillator energy. In 1913, Einstein and Stern suggested that motional frequencies contributing to specific heat fell into two categories—those that were independent of temperature and those that were not (e.g. rotational energy), leading them to conclude that zero-point energy on the order of ½ hυ was most likely. In the second part of their paper, however, they provided a derivation of Planck's Law without taking recourse to discontinuity, by assuming that the value of the ZPE was simply hu. It is worth noting that Einstein had already in 1905 (“Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes betreffenden heuristichen Gesichtspunkt”, Ann. d. Phys, 17, 132) framed the problem of discontinuity, even if only heuristically, as one of placing limits upon the infinite energy of the vacuum state raised by the Rayleigh-Jeans dispersion law. According to Einstein, the Rayleigh-Jeans law would result in an impossibility, the existence of infinite energy in the radiation field, and this was precisely incompatible with Planck's discovery—which suggested instead that at high frequencies the entropy of waves was replaced by the entropy of particles. Einstein, therefore, could only hope for a stochastic validation of Maxwell's equations at high frequencies “by supposing that electromagnetic theory yields correct time-average values of field quantities”, and went on to assert that the vibration-energy of high frequency resonators is exclusively discontinuous (integral multiples of hυ).
Since then, ZPE theories have gone on a course independent from Planck's second theory. The more recent root of modern ZPE theories stems from the work of H. Casimir who, in 1948, apparently showed the existence of a force acting between two uncharged parallel plates. Fundamentally the Casimir effect is predicated upon the existence of a background field of energy permeating even the ‘vacuum’, which exerts a radiation pressure, homogeneously and from all directions in space, on every body bathed in it. Given two bodies or particles in proximity, they shield one another from this background radiation spectrum along the axis (i.e. the shortest distance) of their coupling, such that the radiation pressure on the facing surfaces of the two objects would be less than the radiation pressure experienced by all other surfaces and coming from all other directions in space. Under these conditions, the two objects are effectively pushed towards one another as if by an attractive force. As the distance separating the two objects diminishes, the force pushing them together increases until they collapse one onto the other. In this sense, the Casimir effect would be the macroscopic analogy of the microscopic van der Waals forces of attraction responsible for such dipole-dipole interactions as hydrogen bonding. However, it is worth noting that the van der Waals force is said to tend to establish its normal radius, or the optimal distance between dipoles, as the distance where the greatest attractive force is exerted, beyond which the van der Waals forces of nuclear and electronic repulsion overtake the attraction force.
Subsequently, another Dutch physicist, M. Sparnaay, demonstrated that the Casimir force did not arise from thermal radiation and, in 1958, went on to attribute this force to the differential of radiation pressure between the ZPE radiation from the vacuum state surrounding the plates and the ZPE radiation present in the space between them. Sparnaay's proposal is that a classical, nonquantal, isotropic and ubiquitous electromagnetic zero-point energy exists in the vacuum, and even at a temperature of absolute zero. It is further assumed that since the ZPE radiation is invariant with respect to the Lorentz transformations, it obeys the rule that the intensity of its radiation is proportional to the cube of the frequency, resulting in an infinite energy density for its radiation spectrum.
What appeared to be the virtue of this reformulated theory was the notion that the vacuum no longer figured as pure space empty of energy, but rather as a space exposed to constantly fluctuating ‘fields of electromagnetic energy’.
Puthoff has utilized the isomorphism between van der Waals and Casimir forces to put forth the zero-point (ZP) energy theory of gravity, based on the interpretation that the virtual electromagnetic ZP field spectrum predicted by quantum electrodynamics (QED) is functionally equivalent to an actual vacuum state defined as a background of classical or Maxwellian electromagnetic radiation of random phases, and thus can be treated by stochastic electrodynamics (SED). Whereas in QED, the quanta are taken as virtual entities and the infinite energy of the vacuum has no physical reality, for SED, the ZPE spectrum results from the distortion of a real physical field and does not require particle creation. Gravity then, could be seen as but the macroscopic manifestation of the Casimir force.
We do not dispute the fact that even in space absent matter there is radiant energy present which is not of a thermal nature. But we claim that this energy is not electromagnetic, nor is its energy spectrum infinite. That this is so stems not just from our opinion that it is high time that Einstein's heuristic hypothesis should be taken as literally factual—in the dual sense that all electromagnetic energy is photon energy and all photons are local productions, but above all from the fact that it is apparent, from the experiments of Wang and his colleagues (Wang, Li, Kuzmich, A & Dogariu, A. “Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation”, Nature 406; #6793; 277), that the photon stimulus can propagate at supraluminal speeds and lies therefore well outside of any scope of electromagnetic theory, be this Maxwell's classical approach taken up by ZPE theories, or Einstein's special relativistic phenomenology of Maxwell's theory. The fact is that if the light stimulus can propagate at speeds greater than those of light, then what propagates is not light at all, and thus not energy configured electromagnetically. Light is solely a local production of photons in response to the propagation of a stimulus that itself is not electromagnetic.
It is critical to understand that the implication from this that—aside from local electromagnetic radiation and from thermal radiation associated with the motions of molecules (thermo-mechanical energy), there is at least another form of energy radiation which is everywhere present, even in space absent matter. Undoubtedly, it is that energy that prevents any attainment of absolute zero, for any possible local outpumping of heat is matched by an immediate local conversion of some of this energy into a minimum thermal radiation required by the manifolds of Space and Time. And undoubtedly also this radiation is ubiquitous and not subject to relativistic transformations (i.e. Lorentz invariant). What it is not, is electromagnetic radiation consisting of randomistic phases of transverse waves.
To understand this properly, one must summarize the differences from existing ZPE theories—and all these differences come down to the fact that this energy which is neither electromagnetic nor thermal per se (and is certainly not merely thermo-mechanical), has nevertheless identifiable characteristics both distributed across subtypes or variants and as well common to all of them.
Essentially the first subtype or variant consists of longitudinal massfree waves that deploy electric energy. They could well be called Tesla waves, since Tesla-type transformers can indeed be shown experimentally to radiate massfree electric energy, in the form of longitudinal magnetic and electric waves having properties not reduceable to photon energy or to ‘electromagnetic waves’, and having speeds of displacement that can be much greater than the limit c for all strictly electromagnetic interactions.
One may well denote the second subtype by the designation of massfree thermal radiation, since it contributes to temperature changes—and, as obviously indicated by the impossibility of reaching an absolute zero of temperature, this contribution occurs independently of the presence of matter, or mass-energy, in Space. In other words, not all thermal radiation can be reduced to vibration, rotation and translation (drift motion) of molecules, i.e. to thermomechanical energy, because the properties of pressure and volume that determine temperature and affect matter, appear indeed to a great extent to be independent from matter, a fact which itself is responsible for the observed catastrophic and unexpected phase changes of matter and has required to this day the insufficient explanation offered semi-empirically by the Van der Waals Force Law.
Finally the third subtype may be designated latent massfree energy radiation—since it deploys neither charge, nor thermal or baroscopic effects, and yet it is responsible for ‘true latent heat’ or for the ‘intrinsic potential energy’ of a molecule. It is also responsible for the kinetoregenerative phenomenon whereby an electroscope performs a variable charge-mediated work against the local gravitational field.
The common characteristic of all three subtypes of massfree energy radiation is that they share the same nonclassical fine structure, written as follows for any energy unit, where c is any speed of light wave function, and the wavelength λ and wave function W are interconnected as a function of the physical quality of the energy field under consideration:E=λcW
In the instance of longitudinal electric radiation, this takes on the directly quantizable form:E=(λqc)Wv=peWv=(h/λx)Wv=∫=qVwhere Wv is the voltage-equivalent wave function corresponding to V, pe constitutes the linear momentum corresponding to the conventional q or e, h is the Planck constant, λx the Duane-Hunt constant expressed as a wavelength, λq is a wavelength constant; and the sign =∫=signifies exact equality between an expression in the conventional dimensions of length, mass and time, and an expression in length and time dimensions alone.
In the instance of massfree thermal radiation (contributing to temperature changes), the transformation obeys Boltzmann's rule (k is now Boltzmann's constant and T is Kelvin-scale temperature):E=λn1cWn1=λn1(λVζp)(λαζn1)=∫=kTand in the third instance—of latent massfree radiation, the transformation obeys the rule:E=λn1cWn1=λn1(λn1ζn1)(λn1fn1)=λn13ζn1fn1where ζ and f are frequency functions, f being a specific gravitational frequency term, and fn1 being defined as equal to (λn1)−0.5 meter0.5sec−1. ζn1 has the value of c/λn1.
If the electric variant of massfree radiation has a direct quantum equivalence, via the Duane-Hunt Law, none of the three primary aether energy variants possess either the classic form of electromagnetic energy which requires square superimposition of speed of light wave functions c, as c2, or the quantum form of energy, requiring E=hυ. The critical first step in the right direction may well be attributed to Dr. W. Reich, as it regards the fact that massfree energy couples two unequal wave functions, only one of which is electromagnetic and abides by the limit c. We then unravelled the threefold structure described above, and further showed that, in the case of longitudinal electric waves, the postulated equivalence (q=λqc) is merely phenomenological, as these waves are not restricted by the function c in their conveying of electric charge across space. It can further be demonstrated that all blackbody photons are bound by an upper frequency limit (64*1014 Hz), above which only ionizing photons are produced, and that all blackbody photons arise precisely from the interaction of massfree electric radiation with molecules of matter (including light leptons), whereby the energy of that radiation is locally converted into photon or electromagnetic radiation. In other words, all nonionizing electromagnetic energy appears to be secondary energy that results locally from the interaction of matter with massfree electric energy. It cannot therefore consist of the primary energy that is present in the vacuum, an energy that is neither virtual nor electromagnetic, but actual and concrete in its electric, thermal and antigravitic manifestations. Lastly, gravitational energy, being either the potential or the kinetic energy responsible for the force of attraction between units of matter, is a manifestation that also requires, much as electromagnetic radiation does, coupling of massfree energy to matter or to mass-energy.
The Tesla coil is a generator of a massfree electric energy flux that it transmits both by conduction through the atmosphere and by conduction through the ground. Tesla thought it did just that, but it has been since regarded instead (because of Maxwell, Hertz and Marconi) as a transmitter of electromagnetic energy. The transmitter operates by a consumption of massbound electric power in the primary, and by induction it generates in the coupled secondary two electric fluxes, one massbound in the coil conductor, and the other massfree in the body of the solenoid. Tesla also proposed and demonstrated a receiver for the massfree energy flux in the form of a second Tesla coil resonant with the first. The receiver coil must be identical and tuned to the transmitter coil; the capacitance of the antenna plate must match that of the transmitter plate; both transmitter and receiver coils must be grounded; and the receiver coil input and output must be unipolar, as if the coil were wired in series.
The generators of massfree energy with which we are concerned provide current pulses associated with a damped wave (DW) oscillation of much higher frequency than the pulse repetition frequency. A particular problem in recovering the massfree energy content of such pulses is provided by the damped wave oscillations. Although in our U.S. Pat. No. 5,416,391 we describe arrangements incorporating split phase motors to recover such energy, their efficiency is a great deal less than what should theoretically be attainable. Other workers such as Tesla and Reich, have encountered the same problem to an even greater degree.
In XIXth century motor engineering terminology, dynamos capable of producing direct current by continuous homopolar induction were known as ‘unipolar’ generators. The term unipolar induction appears to have originated with W. Weber, to designate homopolar machines where the conductor moves continuously to cut the magnetic lines of one kind of magnetic pole only, and thus require sliding contacts to collect the generated current. Faraday's rotating copper disc apparatus was, in this sense, a homopolar generator when the disc was driven manually, or a homopolar motor when the current was provided to it. Where the rotating conductor continuously cuts the magnetic field of alternatingly opposite magnetic poles, the operation of a machine, whether a generator or a motor, is said to be heteropolar. Unipolar machines went on to have a life of their own in the form of low voltage and high current DC generators—from Faraday, through Plucker, Varley, Siemens, Ferraris, Hummel, to Lord Kelvin, Pancinoti, Tesla and others—almost exclusively in the form of disc dynamos, but some having wound rotors. In Mordey's alternator, and in so-called ‘inductor alternators’, however, homopolar generators were employed to obtain alternating currents, with the use of rotors wound back and forth across the field. Use of smooth, unwound rotors in AC induction motors (as opposed to AC synchronous motors, such as hysteresis motors) was a later development than homopolar dynamos. By 1888, Tesla and Ferraris amongst still others, had independently produced rotating magnetic fields in a motor, by employing two separate alternate currents with the same frequency but different phase. Single phase alternate current motors were developed later, and split-phase motors were developed last. Ferraris (Ferraris, G (1888) “Rotazioni elettrodynamiche”, Turin Acad, March issue.) proposed the elementary theory of the 2-phase motor, where the current induced in the rotor is proportional to the slip (the difference between the angular velocity of the magnetic field and that of the rotating cylinder), and the power of the motor is proportional to both the slip and the velocity of the rotor.
If an iron rotor is placed within the rotating magnetic field of a 2-phase stator, it will be set in rotation, but not synchronously, given that it is always attracted to the moving magnetic poles with a lag. But if an aluminum or copper rotor is used instead, it becomes ‘dragged’ around by the rotating stator field because of the eddy currents induced in it. If the aluminum or copper rotor were to rotate synchronously with the stator magnetic field, there would be no induced eddy currents and thus no motor action would result. The motor action depends, in this instance, upon the presence of asynchronous slip, since the function of the latter is to sustain the induction of those currents in the rotor that are responsible for the motor action of the dragged rotor. This then is the origin of the term ‘AC drag motors’. Once the drag rotor evolved from a cylinder to a hollow cup, they earned the epithet of ‘drag-cup motors’. Later, already in the XXth century, the cups were fitted over a central stator member, and the sleeve rotor 2 phase servomotor was born.
Tesla knew that impulse currents as well as CW sinusoidal currents could be used to drive AC motors. Regarding his invention of an hysteresis motor (‘magnetic lag motor’, as he called it), he stated: “. . . pulsatory as well as an alternating current might be used to drive the[se] motors . . . ” (Martin, T C (1894) “The inventions, researches and writings of Nikola Tesla”, Chapter XII, p. 68). In his search for efficient utilization of the high frequency DW impulse currents of his induction coils, Tesla began by employing an AC disc induction motor as shown in FIG. 17 of his famous 1892 address (Tesla, N (1892) “Experiments with alternate currents of high potential and high frequency”, in “Nikola Tesla Lectures”, 1956, Beograd, pp. L-70–71). This consisted of a copper or aluminum disc mounted vertically along the longitudinal axis of an iron core on which was wound a single motor coil which was series wired to the distal terminal of an induction coil at one end, and to a large suspended and insulated metal plate at the other. What was new about this was the implementation of an AC disc induction motor drive, where the exciting current traveled directly through the winding with just a unipolar connection to the coil secondary (under certain conditions, even the series connection to the plate could be removed, or replaced with a direct connection to the experimenter's body): “What I wish to show you is that this motor rotates with one single connection between it and the generator” (Tesla, N. (1892), op. cit., L-70, Tesla's emphasis). Indeed, he had just made a critical discovery that, unlike in the case of massbound charge where current flow requires depolarization of a bipolar tension, massfree charge engages current flow unipolarly as a mere matter of proper phase synchronization.
Tesla thought that his motor was particularly adequate to respond to windings that had ‘high-self-induction’, such as a single coil wound on an iron core. The basis of this self-induction is the magnetic reaction of a circuit, or an element of a circuit—an inductor—whereby it chokes, dims or dampens the amplitude of electric waves and retards their phase.
For the motor to respond to still higher frequencies, one needed to wind over the primary motor winding a partial overlap secondary, closed through a capacitor, since “it is not at all easy to obtain rotation with excessive frequencies, as the secondary cuts off almost completely the lines of the primary” (Idem, L-71.).
Tesla stated that “an additional feature of interest about this motor” was that one could run it with a single connection to the earth ground, although in fact one end of the motor primary coil had to remain connected to the large, suspended metal plate, placed so as to receive or be bathed by “an alternating electrostatic field”, while the other end was taken to ground. Thus Tesla had an ordinary induction coil that transmitted this “alternating electrostatic field”, an untuned Tesla antenna receiving this “field”, and a receiver circuit comprising his iron-core wound motor primary, a closely coupled, capacitatively closed secondary, and the coupled nonferromagnetic disc rotor. Eventually, in his power transmission system, he would replace this transmitter with a Tesla coil, and place an identical receiving coil at the receiving end, to tune both systems and bring them into resonance. But his motor remained undeveloped, and so did the entire receiver system.
Tesla returned to this subject a year later: “on a former occasion I have described a simple form of motor comprising a single exciting coil, an iron core and disc” (Tesla, N (1893) “On light and other high frequency phenomena”, in “Nikola Tesla Lectures”, 1956, Beograd, pp. L-130, and L-131 with respect to FIG. 16-II). He describes how he developed a variety of ways to operate such AC motors unipolarly from an induction transformer, and as well other arrangements for “operating a certain class of alternating motors founded on the action of currents of differing phase”. Here, the connection to the induction transformer is altered so that the motor primary is driven from the coarse secondary of a transformer, whose finer primary is coupled, at one end, directly and with a single wire to the Tesla secondary, and at the other left unconnected. On this occasion, Tesla mentions that such a motor has been called a ‘magnetic lag motor’, but that this expression (which, incidentally, he had himself applied to his own invention of magnetic hysteresis motors) is objected to by “those who attribute the rotation of the disc to eddy currents when the core is finally subdivided” (Tesla, N (1893), op. cit., p. L-130).
In none of the other motor solutions, 2-phase or split-phase, that he suggests as unipolar couplings to the secondary of an induction coil, does the nonferromagnetic disc rotor motor again figure. But he returns to it a page later, and indirectly so, by first addressing the disadvantages of ferromagnetic rotors: “Very high frequencies are of course not practicable with motors on account of the necessity of employing iron cores. But one may use sudden discharges of low frequency and thus obtain certain advantages of high-frequency currents without rendering the iron core entirely incapable of following the changes and without entailing a very great expenditure of energy in the core. I have found it quite practicable to operate, with such low frequency disruptive discharges of condensers, alternating-current motors.”
In other words—whereas his experiments with constant wave (CW) alternating currents, and as well with high-voltage DW impulses from induction coils, indicated the existence of an upper frequency limit to iron core motor performance, one might employ instead high-current, DW impulses—of high DW frequencies but low impulse rates—to move these motors quite efficiently. Then he adds “A certain class of [AC] motors which I advanced a few years ago, that contain closed secondary circuits, will rotate quite vigorously when the discharges are directed through the exciting coils [emphasis added]. One reason that such a motor operates so well with these discharges is that the difference of phase between the primary and secondary currents is 90 degrees, which is generally not the case with harmonically rising and failing currents of low frequency. It might not be without interest to show an experiment with a simple motor of this kind, inasmuch as it is commonly thought that disruptive discharges are unsuitable for such purposes.”
What he proposes next forms the basis of modern residential and industrial AC electric power meters, the AC copper disc motor whose rotor turns on the window of these meters, propelled forward by the supply frequency. But instead of employing any such CW input, Tesla uses the disruptive discharges of condensers, incipiently operating as current rectifiers. With the proper conditions, e.g. correct voltage from the generator, adequate current from the capacitor, optimum capacitance for the firing rate, and tuned spark-gap, to mention a few, Tesla found that the nonferromagnetic disc rotor turned but with considerable effort. But this hardly compared to the results obtained with a high-frequency CW alternator, which could drive the disc “with a much smaller effort”. In summary then, Tesla went as far as being the first to devise a motor driven by Tesla waves, that employed a nonferromagnetic rotor, and whose arrangement encompassed both transmitter and receiver circuits. For this purpose, he employed a single phase method in which the signal is fed unipolarly to the winding, placed in series with a plate capacitance.
Tesla also later proposed driving a similar single-phase nonferromagnetic disc motor from bipolar capacitative discharges through an atmospheric spark-gap now placed in parallel with the main motor winding, and again simulating a split-phase by a closely wound secondary that was closed by a capacitance.
As Tesla admits, the results of all his AC eddy current motor solutions were meagre and limited by current and frequency problems. Likewise, the two phase arrangements proposed by Reich for his OR motor, involving a superimposition of the damped waves of a first phase on a fixed continuous wave second phase, require an external power source and a pulse amplifier circuit, and failed to meet Reich's own desiderata.
We have previously proposed the use of squirrel cage motors with capacitative splitting of phase to convert the damped wave (DW) output of plasma pulsers, but once a squirrel cage (SC) is introduced, the dampening effect which the nonferromagnetic copper cage exerts in being dragged by the revolving stator field is counteracted by the ferromagnetic cylinder of laminated iron, in which the copper cage is embedded, working to diminish the slip and bring the rotor to near synchronism. This is, in all likelihood, what limits SC motors to responding to the DC component of the DW impulse, and thus be limited to respond to fluxes of massbound charges. Historically, as we shall see, the obvious advantage of the SC servomotors lay in the fact that, in particular for 2-phase applications, they were far more efficient at performing work without evolution of heat. Indeed, if the eddy currents in the nonferromagnetic rotor are permitted to circulate in nonordered form, the rotor material and stator will heat up rapidly and consume much power in that heating. This is in fact considered to be a weakness of AC nonferromagnetic-rotor induction motors.